Gerard Mastrianni’s memory lives through an event he started that has helped to raise millions of dollars for cancer research. This year’s Trading for a Cure will be Feb. 3 (www.tradingforacure.org).
Mastrianni, who beat back Hodgkin’s disease in 1997 and 2002, went on to raise $2.5 million for cancer research. He died Nov. 10 at the age of 41.
An 18-year veteran trading international stocks, he was director of trading at Stockcross Global and a well-known trader on the Security Traders Association conference circuit. He died from complications during heart surgery. Stockcross is sponsoring the trading day when commissions go for cancer research.
Since 2003, Mastrianni has raised $500,000 through Trading for a Cure, whose primary beneficiary has been children undergoing treatment at the Florida Hospital Cancer Institute in Orlando, Fla. He also helped to raise another $2 million through personal appeals to friends on Wall Street and throughout Florida, according to Des Cummings, president of the Florida Hospital Foundation, the institute’s fund-raising arm. “He was just a warrior,” Cummings said of Mastrianni, who had undergone aggressive therapies that weakened him, but did not hinder his fund-raising efforts.
The money he raised pushed forward experimental treatments and partnerships with UCLA Medical Center and Duke University Medical School, Cummings pointed out. “Gerry said, ‘I’m not going to take this lying down,’ and he didn’t,” Cummings said. “He had an irreverent defiance of cancer.” Mastrianni is survived by his wife, Lisa, and six-year-old daughter, Sophia.
(c) 2009 Traders Magazine and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.tradersmagazine.com http://www.sourcemedia.com/
